Carl Maxie Brashear, First Black Navy Diver

After enduring death threats from white shipmates and efforts by Navy officers to sabotage his final exam in diving school, Carl Maxie Brashear emerged as the Navy's first black deep sea diver.

He had no intention of giving that up in 1966, after injuries suffered while recovering a bomb left him an amputee.

In the months after the accident, Master Chief Petty Officer Brashear put himself through grueling physical training.

"It's not a sin to be knocked down," he told the Salt Lake Tribune in 2002. "It's a sin to stay down."

Master Chief Petty Officer Brashear went on to become the first black master diver in the U.S. Navy, and the first amputee to be restored to full active duty as a diver. His story was told in the 2000 film Men of Honor . He died of respiratory and heart failure Tuesday at the Naval Medical Center in Portsmouth, Va. He was 75.

His son Phillip, a helicopter pilot, was brought back from Iraq last week because of his father's illness. In addition to Phillip, Master Chief Petty Officer Brashear is survived by sons DaWayne Brashear and Patrick Brashear, all by his first wife Junetta Brashear. The couple divorced but remained friends. Another son, Shazanta Brashear, died in 1996.